How Your Recruiting Teams Can Help Laid Off American Workers

Many industries such as the hospitality industry and the construction industry have seen massive layoffs over the past couple of weeks. These workers no doubt rely on their salaries for their living expenses. With several other sectors facing hiring surges, your recruiting teams can help during these difficult times by connecting talent from these hard-hit industries to the open positions I cover in this article.

Speed and efficiency are key

Drugstores, consumer goods, and groceries are critical infrastructure businesses. They’re all hiring to the tune of about 400,000 workers in the next month. All 7 of the companies covered below have high volume needs that are focused on hiring as quickly and efficiently as possible. For example, Pizza hut is looking to get drivers on the road within 5 hours of hiring them and Walmart is trying to turn around applications in 24 hours instead of 2 weeks.

These businesses needed these workers yesterday, and your company has the candidate pool available to provide them. You’ll be best able to provide talent to these businesses by following best practices for candidate engagement.

Here’s the list of who’s hiring:

Drugstores need 59,500 workers

CVS is hiring more than 50,000 full time, part-time, and contract positions across 9,900 drugstores in the U.S. Roles they are hiring for include store workers, delivery drivers, distribution center positions, and customer service positions.

Walgreens is also hiring 9,500 workers for full time, part-time, and temporary positions. Positions they’re looking to fill include customer service associates, pharmacy technicians, and shift leads.

Food delivery needs 40,000 workers

Pizza Hut is looking to fill 30,000 full-time roles for positions including cooks, managers, and shift leaders. Pizza Hut is increasing the speed of its recruiting and training process. They have a goal of getting drivers on the road just 5 hours after hiring them.

Local retail needs 200,000 workers

Walmart needs to hire 150,000 associates by May for positions in stores, clubs, distribution centers, and fulfillment centers. Walmart is also focusing on creating speed and efficiency in its recruiting process. They’re targeting reducing application turnaround time from 2 weeks to 24 hours.

Dollar Tree is hiring 25,000 workers for full time and part-time positions at retail stores and distribution centers. Retail positions are primarily cashiers while equipment operators are in high demand at distribution centers.

Finally, 7-11 needs 20,000 workers to support a forecasted surge in deliveries caused by the shelter in place orders.

Amazon needs 100,000 workers

Amazon is seeing a significant increase in order volume due to Coronavirus and is adding 100,000 full and part-time positions across the United States to fill positions in its delivery network and fulfillment centers.

Help laid-off Americans transition to new work

Many industries, like the hospitality industry, have suddenly laid off a large part of their workforce. You may have millions of candidates already in your database that are looking for employment. This is an area where conversational AI for recruiting can help.

Conversational AI can reach out to candidates and perform a profile refresh conversation. This is a general conversation where the CAI asks candidates general information around their industry, work interests, and employment status. The CAI then updates the candidate’s data directly on the candidate profile in your ATS.

You could use CAI to reach out to candidates and ask if they are open to new opportunities or looking for work. Second, you can use CAI to have a job req outreach conversation. If you have a specific job req open, say for medical professionals, you can have CAI contact passive candidates, pre-screen them, and schedule them for interviews with your recruiting team.

Chances are many of the candidates in your database today are open to new opportunities and in need of work. Think about how you can use conversational AI to support your recruiting teams as they help laid-off Americans find employment.

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